With the benefit of hindsight, former attorney general Wally Oppal aptly called the saga of Vancouver’s missing and murdered women a tragedy of epic proportions.

A big part of the tragedy is that many of these women would not have died if we had recognized what was happening at the time. The continuing part is that many of the conditions that set the stage for both the murders and the way they were allowed to go on for so long still exist today.

A little over two years after being appointed to head the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, Oppal has issued a massive report with scores of recommendations, including the politically problematic creation of a regional police force.

The report has already been criticized as adding little to the debate over what went wrong over a decade to allow William Pickton to continue killing marginalized women from the Downtown Eastside and make them disappear on his Maple Ridge pig farm.

It’s true that many of the details were already known from the trial, from earlier reporting in the media and several months of public testimony before the Oppal commission.

But what’s important now about the report is not whether it brings any new perspective to the story so far, but what we do with it.

To complain now that it could have been better, that the inquiry could have been more exhaustive, that more lawyers would have made a difference, misses the point. We know what many of the lessons are. The question now is whether we are willing to show that those lessons have been learned.

We will not honour the women who died with more study, more finger-pointing and more blame. We can only honour their memory now by doing what is needed to ensure that no one else goes missing from the Downtown Eastside, or if they do, that we treat it with the same alarm that we would if were someone kidnapped from a Shaughnessy mansion.

We’ve known about most of the issues detailed by Oppal for decades, not days. Some, including violence against women, drug addiction, poverty and the marginalization of the poor, are global in extent. Those involving First Nations are common across Canada.

The patchwork of policing across the Lower Mainland and the shame of the Downtown Eastside are peculiar to Vancouver.

To those politicians who promise this report will be a call to action, let’s be clear, that real change will not be cheap, easy or quick.

The idea of a regional police force has been around for some time and the lukewarm response it got again from the province and the opposition from some local mayors suggests that it doesn’t have much chance of being implemented.

The only way it would be possible is if the province were willing to impose it on the region. In the absence of the political will to do so, the provincial government still has the responsibility to insure that the local municipalities are working together smoothly enough that cracks between them, such as the one that may have allowed Pickton to keep killing so long, don’t reappear.

We are encouraged by the appointment of former Lt.-Gov. Stephen Point to keep alive the issues catalogued in Oppal’s report and monitor progress on the recommendations.

Although he has little power other than persuasion, Point has the profile and respect across social and political lines needed to ensure that the Oppal report is not just the end of a dark chapter in the history of Vancouver, but the beginning of a brighter one.

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Editorial: Oppal missing women report’s value in its implementation

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